The Empty Flat
by itsadeathfrisbee
Summary: What happens to John after Sherlock fell, or why John might pass out when he sees Sherlock again. Because it hurts so much when he thinks about that brilliant, idiotic man who jumped off that roof and left him alone. NO SPOILERS I SWEAR, because i live in America. Please read, its my first ever!


**So, because we in America don't get to celebrate the New Year with Sherlock, I'm publishing my fic that I wrote a while ago. Feel free to read, because there are no spoilers or anything, just an idea I had. I don't own Sherlock. The BBC, Steven Moffat, and Mark Gatiss do, all I own are my ideas.**

The Empty Flat

London was experiencing a record-breaking heat wave, and people were flocking to the beaches, basking in the sun, enjoying the weather for as long as it lasted. John hated it. Hated the sun that shone so perversely through the clouds that surrounded him. John had a vague sense that storms should be gathering, converging on 221B, where that most brilliant and obnoxious man had lived; a feeling of wrongness that people walked around believing the man who had done so much for them was a fraud; a surety that the world should be falling apart.

The weather defied him all the way back to the flat, trying to penetrate the darkness that lingered around him. Once he was inside, he could shut the curtains and pretend the world outside was as dark as the flat. When it was dark, it was easier to ignore the emptiness of the place. Mrs. Hudson had cleared up all of Sherlock's experiments, returned a few microscopes that Sherlock had permanently "borrowed" to Bart's, and given the rest of his equipment to a university. All that remained of Sherlock was his armchair, that ridiculous skull on the mantelpiece, and his room. The flat was free of the personality it had acquired under its resident genius, and now it was as bare as John's military simplistic living style. The living room wasn't buried under various experiments and papers that Sherlock was cataloguing in his Mind Palace, the kitchen was up to inspection standards, there were no limbs in the icebox (human or otherwise), and no eyeballs in the microwave.

John wandered over to the mantelpiece. The skull stared back at him with empty eye-sockets. Sherlock had specifically willed it to him. The stupid bastard had written up a will with three bequeaths; the skull to John, a teapot to Mrs. Hudson, and a syringe that John had no idea had existed to Lestrade. John had been mortified, but Lestrade had smiled softly and explained that he believed it was Sherlock's way of thanking him for helping Sherlock to get clean. The will had gone on, in typical Sherlockian fashion, to insult whoever else may have been reading it, including lawyers, people in general, and most prominently, Mycroft. John bent down so he was at "eye" level with the skull.

"Do you miss him too? "

Being a skull, it didn't answer. John was reminded of those first few days in the flat, watching Sherlock move about in a flurry, introducing the skull as "a friend of mine", of himself getting caught up in Sherlock's personal hurricane of activity barely 10 minutes after he walked through the door of the flat. Sherlock had been alone before John had arrived, talking his deductions through to a skull, throwing himself into his "work". Now John was as alone as Sherlock had been now that he had gone.

John considered fighting back the wave of emotion that swept over him, but ended up letting it wash over him. Remembering Sherlock was like peeling a scab off of a sore: it hurt and as a doctor he knew he shouldn't, but remembering felt so_ good_; almost euphoric was the sharp pain got out of poking this festering wound. And there was something else to be gained from remembering his best friend. He glanced eagerly around the flat, trying to bring up old memories. Immediately, he was greeted with ghostly images of his friend lingering in the flat. Sherlock was sulking on the sofa, bending over an experiment on the kitchen counter, curled up in his chair shouting at the telly, facing the window and swaying in time to his violin. John missed hearing Sherlock, who had (_had! Oh god past tense was so hard to deal with) _been rather awkward when expressing himself emotionally, pour his feelings into his music, missed his ability to express everything he felt through the instrument, he missed how close he felt to Sherlock when he showed his ability to feel emotions (_sociopath, yeah right_). When John had come home the day before the funeral, planning to bury Sherlock with the violin, he had been upset to find that it was gone, probably taken by Mycroft. John had seen that infernal black car of his leaving the flat as the cab pulled up, and although he was still furious with Mycroft, he understood the need for something to remember him by. He supposed there was a certain sentimental value to the instrument, seeing as it was Sherlock's favorite means of communicating his displeasure at one of Mycroft's sudden appearances.

John was beginning to feel the beginnings of one of his _episodes_ coming on. _Dizziness, throbbing head, fuzzy vision. _He was so _close_, but this wasn't enough. He needed a more painful memory if he didn't want this to resolve itself. He cast eagerly around the flat for something else. He knew the therapist would say that this wasn't good for his recovery, but he _needed _it, he needed to do _it_. His leg was hurting him and he longed to sit down, but he knew that if he did so, the dizziness would fade away, and that was _not _what he wanted to happen right n- wait, his leg. He concentrated on the pain in his leg, and remembered how Sherlock had helped him overcome the psychosomatic limp he had had, and how it was now worse than ever.

The dizziness grew worse, and he was finding that the noise outside the flat was becoming muffled and that the fuzziness around his vision had crept in so that he felt he was staring down a long tunnel. He encouraged these feelings, concentrating on these knife-sharp memories and twisting them as he pushed them into his soul. There was a rushing in his ears.

_A slow awareness. He slowly realizes his eyes are open and that he is watching a shadowy figure depart his limited vision, but he does not remember opening them. He does not remember closing them either, but he knows that he must have because the next thing he becomes aware of is that he is on the floor. The whole world is fuzzy, and the next thing he realizes is that he is hearing a sound like his ears relieving pressure, and all of a suddenthe world is turning the volume slowly up, and he realizes that Mrs. Hudson has been calling his name for a while now. He struggles to his feet, and this is the point in time when he realizes he has passed out._

This entire process happens very rapidly, and he is on his feet before Mrs. Hudson can call his name again. She doesn't know he does this to himself, and luckily his leg gives him a convienient excuse. He answered her before she could worry any more.

"I'm fine Mrs. Hudson, I just fell over, nothing to worry about." He struggled to emulate a calm, in-control tone of voice. Mrs. Hudson had fussed and worried over him since Sherlock's death, most likely a coping mechanism for the caring, motherly woman. Sherlock had been as good as her son ever since he had swept into her life and saved her from her husband, and she had "adopted" John too when he had arrived on her doorstep with Sherlock.

"You didn't answer when I called, you were just lying on the floor." _Bloody Hell, she had seen._

He forced a smile. "I must have hit my head when I fell," he said.

She looked concerned. "Well you are the doctor, but why don't you go lie down, and I'll find you an ice pack." They both knew it would be much easier these days to find an ice pack in the usually cluttered flat.

John nodded fervently, wincing slightly as his head throbbed where it had indeed hit the floor when he fell. He was left to his thoughts as Mrs. Hudson left to get the ice. She was smiling slightly as she always did these days when she could do something to help her remaining "son". Those two had been closer than brothers, she recalled, quarelling and giggling like schoolboys together, and it had affected him terribly when he had seen his best friend jump off that horrid roof. Everyone who still believed in Sherlock had been impacted, but John most of all, and she wanted to do all she could to help.

John leaned back into the couch and sighed. He always felt slightly ashamed for doing this, for completely breaking down like this, like he was disapointing Sherlock by not coping better. He had been through war, seen comrades shot down beside him, been wounded himself and suffered PTSD, and yet at the end of the day, one insufferable man choosing to end his life right in front of his best friend was what made him completely shut down. So much for the bravery of a soldier. After one of these episodes, he would attempt to straighten himself out, to respect Sherlock by living after he had done this thing, but something would always drag him back to this last resort. It could be a bad day in general, it could be some heartless reporter coming up to him in the street, it could be the pain of watching the world utterly reject and ridicule Sherlock, but most often it was _missing_ someone so completely that he couldn't go another _minute_ without seeing him that caused him to drive himself to that point.

Because when he caused himself enough pain through remembering Sherlock, he found at the very end of his conciousness that he could clearly remember every detail of his face, could remember how his voice sounded when they sat chuckling together. And best of all, when he woke up, sometimes his mind would conjure up a hallucination of Sherlock, and for a few seconds before he came to awareness, he would see Sherlock with the expression of care and concern that only he and Mrs. Hudson had ever seen.

The first time this had happened had been only a day after Sherlock's fall. John had been at home, trying to ignore the flash of cameras and the incessant babble of reporters, seeing reminders of Sherlock everywhere. He sat alone in the flat and tortured himself with these images until the pain he caused himself reached the point of a physical ache in his chest, sitting heavily over his lungs and he woke up to find himself measuring his length on the floor. In his awakening stupor, he had felt a pair of hands retract from him and seen a familiar-looking Belfast-attired silhouette hastily leave his line of sight. He had been so convinced that it had actually been Sherlock, not just some vivid hallucination, that he had somehow faked his death, that the body in the morgue was not his, that he had been ready to forgive the idiot everything. He had called out his name, searched the flat for him, and had grown angry with Sherlock for hiding, not listening to the sensible voice in his head expressing doubt. He had rushed over to St. Bart's, intent on proving to his nagging voice that Sherlock was alive. He ran down the isle of drawers, found the one with his name, opened it… and was brought up short, his breath pressing out of him at the sight of Sherlock lying there, pale and waxy as he had only ever seen corpses. He knew he would find none, but he searched for a pulse anyways, falling to his knees when it proved futile.

Since then, he couldn't bring himself to believe that Sherlock was alive again and suffer that same crushing disappointment, and feel that loss anew. Besides, since the funeral, he couldn't very well ask someone to exhume Sherlock's body every time he fooled himself into thinking differently. He had allowed himself one last moment of disbelief, just before they sealed the coffin and lowered him into the ground. He held his fingers gently against his wrist, checking for that evasive pulse, trying to force back tears. He could feel Mycroft behind him, pitying his persistance, and quickly dropped Sherlock's hand and walking away. He just couldn't bear Mycroft right now. He would come back later with Mrs. Hudson.

John admitted to himself that forcing himself to faint in order to possibly have a hallucination of a dead person was probably extremely detrimental to his recovery, that he was acting like an addict and it wasn't healthy, but really he had been addicted to Sherlock and the excitement he offered, addicted to a sense of belonging and of being important and useful again, and when that was taken away he was going into a violent and painful withdrawal. He found himself wishing he had been a little more sympathetic towards Sherlock's deviances in his attempts at going cold turkey.

His train of thought was broken by Mrs. Hudson's arrival with the ice pack. She handed it to him with a smile, lightly saying, "just this once dear, I'm not your housekeeper."

John smiled slightly at her remark and the joke behind it as he accepted the ice, putting it against the back of his head, sighing in relief.

_Sherlock drew the bow softly against his violin, contemplating the situation with John. He hadn't expected him to take it well and had stayed in London with Molly until he could be certain that John would be alright, postponing the time when he would hunt down Moriarty's web one by on. He knew that he had to begin quickly, before someone else took hold of the fraying strands of Moriarty's web, but it would be for nothing if John, the chief reason for this enterprise, was not coping well. He had expected anger, drinking, sadness, perhaps (althugh he doubted it) suicidal behavior, but this reaction was worrying him more than anything he could have dreamed of. He had been hardpressed to return unseen to the morgue before John, and reduce hs bodily fuctions to indecernible levels in time. He had been tailing him when he saw John fall and rushed over to him, turning him over, worried that he had been shot anyways by the sniper, despite all his precautions. Since then, he had become uncomfortably aware that John was trying to replicate the experience, believing that what he saw when he woke was an illusion. Sherlock had continued to go over to him when he fell, believing that this was better for him than possible self-inflicted scars or suicide attempts, which given John's recent behavior seemed much more likely than he would like to believe. As much as he wanted to tell John he was alive, this behavior made it impossible to tell him without a large change in John's grieving, which would tip off Moriarty's people to his survival, which would put John's life in danger, as well as Lestrade's and Mrs. Hudson's. They weren't safe until he destroyed Moriarty's web._

_It worried him that John was becoming increasingly dependent on his "hallucinations" of Sherlock. He decided that in the long run, although it would be hard on John at first, it would be best for him to just leave. John might recover faster, and the sooner he left, the sooner he could destroy everyone who threatened the safety of those few he loved, nd the sooner he could return from the grave and take back his place in life with his friend._

_He whispered as he left "My dear John, I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected" He gulped. "I promise I will make all one thousand of them on my return."_

**Hey, did you like it? This is my first fanfiction, so if you could, would you please give me a review? I'm hoping to continue this, so if you like it, let me know!**


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